Customers that are looking for expertise regarding products or services that they wish to purchase, or have previously purchased or used, often contact customer service representatives by visiting a store or location that is most convenient, visiting a store or location where the customer purchased or signed up for the product or service, or calling customer service representatives over the telephone.
Store locations have limited space to employ customer representatives that are able to serve all of the needs of the customers. Furthermore, since the need for the advice of experts on products and services is based on the timing of the needs of the customers, it is often impractical to place customer representatives with knowledge of every product and service in every store location because much of the time the customer representatives would have little to do. Therefore, it is simply not cost effective to have multiple customer representatives that are knowledgeable about a large breadth of products and services working in every store location. Additionally, when customer representatives with a particular area of expertise are located in a store, in some instances, the customer representatives with the required expertise are busy providing service to another customer, or are otherwise not available when necessary. Still, in some instances when customer representatives are located at a store, they simply may not have the required expertise in a particular area to answer the questions of the customers. Thus, it is often difficult to mesh customer needs with the expertise of a customer representative that can answer the customer's questions. In the cases when a customer representative at the store is not available to meet the needs of the customer, there exists a need to direct a customer to another customer representative that can meet customer's needs.
Call centers are often set up in a supporting role so customers at a store location or other location can talk over the telephone with a customer representative that has the required expertise to deal with the customers' needs. However, telephone calls are a less personal form of customer service between the customer and the customer representative than face-to-face interaction. Customers often feel that face-to-face meetings are more personal and more informative. Therefore, in such cases, a customer may be reluctant to speak with a representative over the telephone at a call center, or the phone call may be less productive due to the inability of the customer representative to gain the trust of the customer in a non-face to face experience.
There are gaps throughout the customer service processes provided by on-site customer representatives and call center customer representatives due to on-site customer representatives and call center representatives that are forced to deal with product and service related issues that they do not have the expertise to handle. Therefore, there is a need for apparatuses and methods for effectively matching the expertise of the customer service representatives with customers in a personal setting.